Dear Students: This is your first graded assignment. It's due one week from today, Sept 4, at the start of class. Please pay careful attention to the following directions, and remember to send me an email message if you need any clarification. I can be reached at csmith@dcad.edu.
1. Choose either Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson.
2. Choose three poems from your chosen poet that establish a pattern. Maybe it's a thematic pattern (about death or nature or religion or fill-in-the-blank). Or maybe it's some other kind of pattern (voice, point-of-view, length of line, sound of language, etc.). You can use the sources on the Poetry Foundation website, link in post below, but you're also free to find other poems online, or in a book or anywhere else.
3. Your essay needs to be exactly five paragraphs (note the word exact). The first paragraph will introduce the pattern you detected and why you think it's worthy of consideration and critical thought.
4. Here's an example of an introductory paragraph: "Whitman's poetry is like a massive run-on sentence that never ends. In this way it closely resembles the way our brains work. Like human consciousness, Whitman's poetry rolls right along. Like our never-ending thoughts, it is repetitive and never stops. And like the beating of our hearts, it is involuntary. When I read Whitman I feel like his voice is inside of my head. I don't remember ever feeling this way about poetry. In this brief essay, I'm going to look closely at three of his poems in an attempt to see how this works. I think Walt Whitman is a magician more than a poet."
5. Notice in the example above how a solid introductory paragraph can operate as a blueprint for the rest of its essay.
6. Your three "body" paragraphs should each focus on one poem. Use direct evidence: "When Whitman writes, "I sing the body electric," it feels like he was a prophet of contemporary ideas about digital technology and human bodies converging. Develop your ideas in your words. Each of these "case-study" paragraphs should directly address one particular poem with your central idea. These paragraphs should be between four and seven sentences each.
7. Write your summation or concluding paragraph. Maybe launch out of the world of Whitman's poetry and write about Whitman's relevance to contemporary ideas about artificial intelligence or human/cyborg convergence.
Formatting: This is simple. One single-spaced typed page. Use a serifed font like Garamond, Georgia, or Times, in 11 pt size. Use standard one-inch margins. Give your essay a meaningful and not boring title. Be sure to proofread it carefully. Because this is your first graded assignment, set your bar high.
I'm happy to meet with you to look over a draft or to help generate ideas. Send me an email message.
Fair warning, our next class period will consist of visual critique of your essays. We won't be able to read all of them, but we'll choose numbers out of a hat. Everyone this semester will have the experience of having their writing critiqued by the class. However, since this is our first assignment, I will not include the names of the writers when I project the essay.
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